Senate Delays Legislation on Aid to Church Charities

By ELIZABETH BECKER

Published: May 24, 2001

WASHINGTON, May 23 — Senators spearheading President Bush's initiative to finance social programs of religious charities said they were indefinitely delaying the legislation.

"I feel that someday we'll move something forward," said Senator Rick Santorum, Republican of Pennsylvania, in an interview this week. Mr. Santorum had promised to introduce legislation this spring. "But right now this is a hot button issue," he said.

Mr. Bush promoted his program this week with a commencement speech at the University of Notre Dame and at a meeting with Hispanic clergy at the White House. But enthusiasm in the Senate has waned.

In another sign of the changing fortunes of the initiative, the Senate did not include a new deduction for charitable contributions in its tax bill. Mr. Bush had presented the extension of deductions for charitable contributions to taxpayers who do not itemize as a tool to increase gifts to religious groups that care for the poor. One independent study estimated that charities could receive $14.6 billion more from that provision.

But supporters and critics said the White House had failed to calm persistent fears that the initiative would undermine Constitutional guarantees separating church and state. Other problems are also slowly fraying the edges of the loose coalition of religious leaders and members of both political parties who have supported the president's initiative.

Some of the religious groups among the strongest supporters of the president's initiative went to Capitol Hill this week to tell Republican lawmakers that continued support would be linked to larger tax breaks for the working poor. They said the initiative was aimed at helping the poor broadly, through policies like the refundable child tax credit, which was not part of the $1.3 trillion tax bill passed earlier by the House.

"If this tax cut is passed without help for the poor then it will be very difficult for us to support them on faith-based issues," said Jim Wallis, head of Call to Renewal, which has strongly supported the president's initiative. Mr. Wallis was joined by representatives of World Vision, the Congress of National Black Churches, the United States Catholic Conference, the Christian Community Development Association and Evangelicals for Social Action.

In the the House, Representative J. C. Watts Jr., Republican of Oklahoma, and Representative Tony P. Hall, Democrat of Ohio, have introduced legislation mirroring the initiative President Bush unveiled in January.

This week they began a campaign telling their colleagues that the thorniest questions in the bill had been resolved and urging their support.

But in the Senate, the debate has been stilled by Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, who co-sponsored a limited bill with Mr. Santorum.

Mr. Lieberman has declined to co- sponsor the pivotal charitable choice legislation that several religious and civil rights organizations say is unconstitutional.

"I've been waiting to see where the White House is going on this, but for now, they aren't directly confronting the most difficult Constitutional problems," he said today.

Absent a response from the White House, Mr. Lieberman said he has asked the Government Accounting Office, the research arm of Congress, to study the possible effect of these programs.

"I believe in this, and I approach this believing that these faith-based groups can help the government make this a better country," he said. "But there are serious questions that haven't been answered."

Other Democrats are concerned that Republicans are using the program to woo black voters, giving money to black inner-city churches in what they see as an increasingly partisan program.

Republican leaders in Congress held a meeting last month to promote the legislation, inviting mostly black religious leaders to receptions and meetings. This was seen as a public repudiation of the bipartisan approach Mr. Bush had said would mark his effort to give all religious groups the same opportunities as secular organizations to receive federal money for social service projects.

Outlining his party's strategy for the Congressional elections, Representative Thomas M. Davis III, the Virginia Republican who heads his party's House campaign organization, said this week that he was counting on President Bush's initiative to convince more black citizens to vote Republican.